Mini Satellites Could Revolutionize Space Industry

An anonymous reader writes "Space Daily reports that University of Toronto researchers are working on a project that could replace conventional satellites with a miniature version no larger than a milk carton. From the article: "At only 3.5 kilograms, the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment 2 (CanX-2) will test small, low-power devices that could lay the groundwork for flying formations of small satellites that could eventually replace larger, more expensive satellites."

Comments

For some reason all that comes to mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Is John Carmack building this gigantic hydrogen-powered trebuchet and launching milk cartons full of electronics into space
 
... I think this is a sign I should be sleeping at 3:35 AM and not reading slashdot

Re:For some reason all that comes to mind

[Breakfast Pants]

I was reminded of Bruce Sterling's Think of the Prestige.

Wow - miniature satallites

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad other electronics didn't follow suit. I predict that within 100 years computers and hand held electronics will be twice as powerful, 10000 times larger and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe will own one.

Re:Wow - miniature satallites

[Guppy06]

You laugh now, but that's the performance specs when you run software on it with 100 years of bloat. :)

Re:Wow - miniature satallites

[BigDogCH]

"hand held electronics will be twice as powerful, 10000 times larger"

Would it still be considered hand held if it weighed 3 tons? Seriously, is there any specific rules on what items can be advertised as "hand held"?

Re:Wow - miniature satallites

[superflyguy]

As far as I know there aren't. However, If you can prove that nobody on the planet can lift it, I'm certain that you can make some money at the expense of the manufacturer.

And now...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we had an elevator to lift all those milk cartons.

Re:And now...

[Xentor]

And a big slingshot at the top, to send them horizontally into orbit!

Thinking of the Muppets...

[Biomechanical]

"Clusters in Space-ace-ace-ace."

In what way is this new?

[Pipedings]

Sure, smaller satellites, smaller payload => cheaper.

I fail to see why formations of smaller satellites should be a new development. If smaller types could accomplish the mission of bigger ones, the big ones wouldn't be up there (carrying large antennae, big lenses or whatever).

Re:In what way is this new?

[spagetti_code]

Another problem is that satellites are affected by numerous gravitational sources (e.g. moon, sun) and slowely wonder off course. For example, equatorial satellites require small adjustments every year. While their mass is very low - there didn't look to be a lot of room inside that box for some thrusters.

Re:In what way is this new?

[dajak]

I fail to see why formations of smaller satellites should be a new development. If smaller types could accomplish the mission of bigger ones, the big ones wouldn't be up there (carrying large antennae, big lenses or whatever).

At the bottom of the article this article is linked, about ESA's SSETI Express, launching 1kg CubeSat picosatellites developed by European universities.

The idea of using smaller and lighter satellites is hardly revolutionary, and resources are quite tight as it is: 71*60*60 cm max. form factor for Ariane 5 launches, peak power of maybe 50W - a modest car pc - if you don't want to add heavy batteries. Fitting multiple micro, nano, or picosatellites in a single cargo hold is the obvious way to decrease costs.

Re:In what way is this new?

[Nowhere.Men]

There are application that can be done with a series of small satellite. Like radar imagery. One who send the pulse the other to receive its echo. You replace meters long antena with small satellites. You can also have a global view of the world looking at several place at the same time. Cluster is a 4 pieces mission, with smaller and cheaper S/C you can extend this concept. What is more interesting is the technology that has to be developed. Small truster, small earthy/S/C link, ... Also to be cheap, such mission must have minimal human intervention to send command, check S/C status, flight dynamics calculation, ... The S/C must have a lot of autonomy.

Re:In what way is this new?

[Usaflt2003]

The reason that we don't have smaller satellites up there is because many of the miniaturized electronic components that are availble for use down here are not robust enough to survive the rigors of launch and space flight. We are just now starting to really experiment with micro, pico and nano sats as the first generations of mini-tech designed to survive launch and orbit are becoming available.

The advantage of constellations of small satellites are numerous. Take weather observation for example. A single satellite is only able to observe 500 miles of a given weather event... for kicks lets say a hurricane. As it zooms in to get more detailed data X decreases exponentially. Well now we have say 5 smaller satellites flying in a longitudenal line and each has the ability to observe 375 miles of that same weather event with a 25 mile over lap at the edge of each observation circle. You now have an observation line 1725 miles long and the ability to zoom in selectively to collect information while still keeping a bigger picture view on the majority of the storm.

This of course does not mean that larger satellites don't have their place but in the space business smaller is also far cheaper. at a launch cost of approx $10K (or atleast thats what its coming to for my missions lately) if I can create a 100 lb satellite that can do the same mission of a 500 lb satellite I will take it. First it means I can ride share and that means someone else is helping with launch costs. Secondly given that there is a ride share that means more payloads are flying which eventually could lead to economies of scale type cost reductions both in satellite and launch vehicle manufacturing/launch services. Third with the more payloads that fly it means that we may actually start making ngrand new discoveries about space again, improve earth observation capability (for things like weather, put away your tinfoil hats), and finally start putting some slack into global satellite communications capability... most people don't realize how tight that pipeline is, but thats a topic for another post.

Re:In what way is this new?

[ronocdh]

If smaller types could accomplish the mission of bigger ones, the big ones wouldn't be up there

Yes, inasmuch as my pocket calculator can't crunch numbers as well as (or better than) a 1950s leviathan computer. If we'd built a space station back then, and thrown such a contraption on board (try not to think of HAL), would you also find it ridiculous that astronauts take laptops, or other portable electronic devices, as there's already a bigger device on board, and bigger equals better?

I do hope I haven't started a "does size matter?" debate. =)

Re:In what way is this new?

[ChrisA90278]

"I fail to see why formations of smaller satellites should be a new developmenT" The word "formation" is what's new. Without explaining the physics just take my word for it. "formations" is hard. Also "small" is hard too the size of an antenna for example is determined by the wavelnght of the signal and the desired beamwidth. YOu can't just make it smaller. A "formation" is one way to address this. It is really a large sat but with empty space between the parts. Satalites need electric power even when they are in darkness (half the time) your cell phone (say), needs a certain level of power or it can't "hear" the signal. Batteries take space Anyways the bottom line is that you are NOT going to be doing direct broadcast TV from a milkcarton sized satilite. BUT the exciting part is that if you can build a cheap enough satilite then you can do taskes that where not cost efective before. It's lke when computers cost a millin dollors each, you choose the tasks you gave them very carfully but now that they are $300 each children can use them to play games. We will find new uses for space when space gets cheap. and with sats this small it's cheap, within a university's budget. In the space bussines it is almost exactly true that cost == weight Again this is exiting because of all the new applications that become economically possable and because any of us could be the person to think of the "next new thing"

Re:In what way is this new?

[Man Eating Duck]

...and slowely wonder off course.

For some reason I found the idea of tiny dreamy satellites careening off into space very funny :)

Your point is a good one, however. I wondered about that too. Maybe the idea is that these are so cheap to get into orbit that you can get away with fewer launches/year, so it doesn't matter if you lose them quicker? The article doesn't mention it at all.

You also have the problem of attitude control, if any of the instruments depends on it.

Re:In what way is this new?

[briancnorton]

This depends on the mission. If you want an earth observing satellite with good resolution like quickbird or Ikonos, the thing needs a certain focal length and aperature size that a microsat just can't provide. Likewise if you are beaming down TV signals, you need large power components that a milk carton can't handle.

There are however space missions that can be done with a smaller satellite.

microgravity research
offensive space capabilities
optical (laser) relays
user your imagination.

The real problem becomes that it is only cheaper if you launch a BUNCH of them at once. Current space launch vehicles are set up to carry satellites the size of school busses.

Re:In what way is this new?

[stuktongue]

I work in the satellite industry. Assuming quality design and manufacture, the primary determinants of a conventional satellite's life (I'm speaking of geosynchronous satellites here) are power and fuel. Non-geosynchronous satellites also have these considerations but have other considerations as well, such as their environment. Because these so-called "nanosatellites" are so small, it would appear that they would not be suitable to geo use since they have such limited space for batteries, solar arrays, and fuel; they are probably intended for LEO/MEO use. In LEO/MEO scenarios, stationkeeping is most likely not as significant an issue as precise position determination, which the GPS system can provide. In essence, I'm thinking they can be allowed to "wander" a little, so long as we know where they are at any given time. I'm not sure how the formation flying aspect plays into this, though.

On the subject of attitude control, there is mention made of both nano reaction wheels and magnetic stabilization. I'm assuming nano reaction wheels are similar in concept to conventional reaction wheels, which allow control of spacecraft attitude through momentum transfer from body to wheel (which, in turn, must periodically be "dumped" using thruster ops). Magnetic stabilization is a new concept for me, but I suppose it might have to do with using current loops to create local magnetic fields that interact with the Earth's magnetic field in a manner that torques the body as desired. This would probably only be practical for very small bodies, since large satellites would probably require overly massive devices to create sufficient torque for adequate control. Interesting stuff, if this is what it really is.

Re:In what way is this new?

[stuktongue]

You point out a lot of interesting ideas here; I'd like to comment on the autonomy aspect. If, at some point, nano-satellites can actually form a reasonable in-space network, then the autonomy can exist at the constellation level. Assuming a sufficient number of satellites in a constellation to allow continuous mission control communications with the network, there could be a continuous stream of messages with various purposes beamed and relayed throughout the network. This, in combination with advanced ground software, could reduce the human interaction factor to an acceptable level. I guess my point is this: in systems such as these, the ground segment architecture (especially control software) may be as important an element of success as the satellites themselves. (This is actually becoming more and more the case in conventional satellite systems, too, especially for the DoD. [I work in the satellite industry.])

Re:In what way is this new?

[stuktongue]

I'm not sure I fully get what you're saying, but it seems as though you are arguing that bigger is not necessarily better if newer technology, which is presumably smaller, comes along to displace older, larger in-place technology. I don't think anyone would argue against that.

I think the original poster's thinking was that there are many missions that require complex payloads, high transmit powers, extensive stationkeeping and/or orbit adjusts, etc., that all require power and fuel systems that are inherently relatively large-scale as compared with these nano-satellites. Such systems are probably not threatened by the emergence of these new capabilities, just as a Hummer is not threatened by a motorcycle; different missions require different solutions.

All of that said, I think that it is possible that small satellites networked together may eventually be able to replace larger designs for certain classes of mission. GPS is a well-known example of this already deployed; more are likely to be developed.

Hmmm smaller satallites

[Compaq_Hater]

How is this going to work i wonder ?, what with all the junk already floating around out there since the late 60's and with the space station how are they going to keep other junk from junking their new baby satallites ?. just a a thought. CH

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[Compaq_Hater]

well hopefully our government will stop wasting money on weapons in space. for one they are of little value as they can not be made practicle for numerous reasons and two i think the money could be better spent on cleaning up the mess the last generation and this one has made. (i.e. fossile fule pollution and radioactive waste contamination.) but i know this easier said than done. CH

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[vkkim]

How is this going to work i wonder ?, what with all the junk already floating around out there since the late 60's and with the space station how are they going to keep other junk from junking their new baby satallites ?. just a a thought. CH

I'm sure that if the satellites are there for a purpose, they will have a power supply and a means to transmit a signal. Hence, one can pick up the signals and find out where they are.

These "baby satellites" are probably safer from space debris than the bigger ones we have up there now, simply because its smaller size provides a smaller target to hit, reducing the probability of being hit.

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[l3v1]

What about us ? I mean if you go up in a space shuttle (I mean like real human transport) or suborbital/orbital transport vehicles (I imagine this is not too far away either) then wouldn't it be easier to navigate among a few dozen larger satellites than among some hundred/thousand smaller ones ?

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[vkkim]

What about us ? I mean if you go up in a space shuttle (I mean like real human transport) or suborbital/orbital transport vehicles (I imagine this is not too far away either) then wouldn't it be easier to navigate among a few dozen larger satellites than among some hundred/thousand smaller ones ?

I suppose the space agency in question would maintain constant tracking of all the satellites that can do damage and just send off flights when it's clear--I doubt spaceflight will become too common anytime soon. Just look at how many shuttle launches we've had in the past few years.

And I believe TFA said the satellites would make formations. One would then only need to track the large group instead of each satellite individually (provided that one doesn't silently fail and slip out of its formation)

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[idego]

Does anybody know how much junk is up there and are there any plans to start collecting it? If you could collect it would it be worth the space station refining it? I mean most of the cost of materials is in there launch but if the stuff is just floating about. On a side note what was the name of the US show where they built there own space ship to collect junk in space, based in a scrap yard and one episode had they salvaging sputnik for it's gold skin?

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[khallow]

I suppose the space agency in question would maintain constant tracking of all the satellites that can do damage and just send off flights when it's clear--I doubt spaceflight will become too common anytime soon. Just look at how many shuttle launches we've had in the past few years.

I think we're about to see a jump in human space activity with a host of space tourism companies getting into the act. Remember the Space Shuttle is effectively a cross between an experiment and a hobby for NASA. It's never been used frequently because there never was a reason to have a lot of Shuttle missions in a given year.

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[fitten]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing... It's not like there isn't tons of stuff up there already... and adding lots of small (read: harder to track) devices will only make the problem worse, I think.

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[Ed_Pinkley]

I believe you are talking about Salvage. (1979 staring Andy Griffith)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079847/

forget satellites, what about probes:

[distantbody]

If it only took 6 months for NASAs Deep Impact probe to reach Tempel 1, why didn't ESA just send the Rosetta probe (with its comet lander) there, instead of waiting until 2014 (launched in 2004) for it to reach its destination? From the imformation i have read there is nothing to suggest a fundamental difference between the comets. If it came down to which mission was more "important", Rosetta would win hands down. Does anyone know the answer to this?

Re:forget satellites, what about probes:

[zardo]

Probably because one does a flyby while it shoots a bullet into the comet, meaning it can fly directly to it, the other has to match velocity with the comet as it's coming around the sun, which is harder to do with a limited fuel supply.

Re:forget satellites, what about probes:

[taskforce]

In addition to the velocity and positioning issues, Deep Impact would be a good indicator on how successful such a comet based mission would be; if Rosetta is that much more important it would certainly help to have the data gained from Deep Impact to assist.

Two Danish micro satellites.

[Saggi]

Denmark has all ready send two micro satellites. They measure only 10x10x10 cm!

They were send up 30. June 2003, along with some commercial satellites and were created as student experiments from "Danmarks Tekniske Universitet" (DTU) and "Aalborg Universitet" (AAU). The goal was to see if you could bring them up there and communicate with them.

You can read more about the two satellites here:

http://dtusat.dtu.dk/
http://www.cubesat.auc.dk/

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[empaler]

I was waiting to see this exact reply. Satellites in that size are not news; the bigger issue here would seem to be that they're planning to cluster them.

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[xs650]

I expected them to use Legos.

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[Easy2RememberNick]

So...they are about the size of a certain Danish pastry?

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[twostar]

Those were cool birds to. I worked on the Cal Poly team that helped with that effort and was heavily involved in tracking operations with our Earth station. To bad we were only half working at the time.

http://www.cubesat.org/

There you guys go. I get tired of people "forgetting" to mention their cool satellite was designed based on the CubeSat spec. Not DTU or AAU, they're cool, just certain other groups... Anyway the CubeSat hardware that we developed at CP and is available to the CubeSat Community. Most of the ideas I see on this page have been discussed by some developer or is in work with some developer. If not, anyone can build one of these birds, the Spec Sheet is on the page and CP is now trying to also coordinate launches for the CubeSat Community.

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[kauschovar]

Just the reply I was looking for. I put in my application to work on CubeSat recently and hope to get started soon.

Re:Two Danish micro satellites.

[whitehatlurker]

Denmark has all ready send two micro satellites. They measure only 10x10x10 cm! They were send up 30. June 2003

Interesting. The first Canadian micro-sat was [l]aunched on June 30, 2003 at 14:15 UTC by Eurockot Launch Services from Plesetsk, Russia, CanX-1 is one of the smallest satellites ever built. It has a mass under 1 kg, fits in a 10 cm cube

Reference

The timing is interesting.

Size matters

[Monte]

Space Daily reports that University of Toronto researchers are working on a project that could replace conventional satellites with a miniature version no larger than a milk carton.

Or a thigh bone?

(Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra)

Re:Great but....

[eddy]

Don't know about these, but Sweden is doing research on micro-satellites and those can be deployed within an hour or two using a normal jet-fighter (Viggen/JAS)

And space garbage collectors open their business..

[Pecisk]

One of biggest problems about orbit that there is already too much garbage round around the globe. It is creating significant danger to any rocket with men going up there. So collecting of this garbage sure will be next big enterprise after opening civilian space flight.

Smaller targets

[Crumplecorn]

These, and later similar designs, will survive any future anti-satellite attacks (for longer) by America due to being harder to hit. Hitting a milk carton in orbit can't be that easy.

Re:Great but....

[yobbo]

Anyone who went to highschool knows all you need is PVC pipe, a sparkplug and a can of hairspray.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[LiquidCoooled]

Looks like your business plan has already been tested.

Spaceballs!

Re:I don't get it?

[danharan]

IIRC, you can sent a mini-sat up with an old converted russian ICBM for a small fraction of the cost of a full-scale launch.

Keep in mind this is a university project, and probably not people that would want/need to send 50 up.

A mighty cool hack :)

Nasa engineers during lunch just after a launch

[jurt1235]

Hey, where is the milk!

MOD PARENT UP

[polarbeerdisorder]

I couldn't get to the SpaceDaily article either. Thanks for posting the full article!

escape velocity for microsatellites with ion drive

[zardo]

I think somebody needs to develop an ion engine for micro-satellites, then universities may be able to afford rockets like the spacex falcon1 which puts their satellite into low-earth orbit, where it uses the ion engine to build up its speed for escape velocity. Perhaps this is the next "killer app" for these private space enthusiasts. So far JPL is the only place to find a highly efficient ion engine. They just came up with a high efficiency, high-power design for project prometheus. Ion engine micro-satellite, watch for them.

Mars

[WindBourne]

It would be nice to be able so send a number of these system so that a small communication network can be set-up. Basically create a small commuication mesh. Each of the sats could have common capabilities (GPS sender, local comm antena, solar, batteries, etc), with each having a unique capability (camera, surface to sat. comm, etc). No doubt somebody will point out that these do not have enough energy (or space) to run a real science device. Yet, the ability to have redundant uplink/downlink comm, a GPS, and eve multiple cameras would be useful to future missions. If one mission to mars could put 100 of these in orbit, then it could be used by other missions.

Re:Mars

[bhima]

I am under the impression that the two largest costs of satellites are the initial development and getting them to LEO. Anything beyond that is a lot less. So it seems to me that a fleet of indentical medium sized satellites orbiting Mars would be a very, very cool thing

Re:Mars

[WindBourne]

Skip the medium size. These are micros. they fit in your hand. One complication with all this, is that:

1. Need a craft to contain them until mars, and them realease them. That is dead weight, but it should be able to be minimized.
2. These systems will have waste. The total weight in batteries ad cells is somewhat high. But that is the price of redudancies.

Interestingly eough, we could send these to the moon first and use these to set up the mesh network for working on the back side of the moon. In addition, we really have not studied it as much as we need. Once these units have survived there for say a year, then sending these to Mars is very doable. I was also thinking that it would be useful to study the 2 mars moons. Then simply send the data back via MRO.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[zardo]

There isn't a whole lot of it actually. There is probably more tonnage in rocks floating around the planet than man-made debris. I don't know where that rumor started, all the man-made stuff is huge, huge empty tanks the ones you can see from the ground. All of them can be tracked with ground observation. Smaller stuff doesn't go that high.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[FirienFirien]

The problem with garbage is that unless it's big enough to show up on radar you don't know where it is. The handy thing about satellites is that firstly you've launched them into an orbit that's planned not to interfere with other orbits, and secondly you know where they are.

MOD PARENT DOWN for being a retard

[FirienFirien]

Read before you mod up. Parent has inserted multiple typos and errors into the text. This is not 'interesting'.

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited..

[bobbo69]

.. have been doing all of this for years and are considered by many to be world leaders in small satellites.

Re:Surrey Satellite Technology Limited..

[efuseekay]

Yeap.

They launched the 6kg SNAP a few years back, I was one of the early designers of that little guy. They actually put 3 momentum wheels for tri-axis attitude control on it eventually.

http://sstl.co.uk// /me worked there about 10 years back when they were beginning to bloom.....

Re:Surrey Satellite Technology Limited..

[DJCater]

Indeed, SNAP was the first satellite to be called a nano-satellite I believe. Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited will also launch the first pico-satellite named PALMSAT. They have been commissioned to build many of Galileo's satellites, Europe's arriving GPS system.

Re:Surrey Satellite Technology Limited..

[shantipole]

in addition to SSTL, AeroAstro (http://www.aeroastro.com/ has been a leader in this field. The president of AeroAstro, Dr. Rick Fleeter has written an excellent primer on microsats called "The Logic of Microspace" that sets out the possibilities of the "microspace" movement. SpaceDev (http://www.spacedev.com/ has also been active in the field with their CHIPsat microsat.

Re:google paid links in main list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the same links when searching for:
slashdot
python
perl
freebsd
linux

I don't think they're paid links. It seems google is putting in useful links with results, if the first web page is very likely what you were searching for. Has anyone heard more about this, e.g. from google itself?

from what I have heard...

[PrivateDonut]

this is a bad idea. They use larger satelites to help slow the effects of gravitational decay. So, shouldn't shrinking the satelites and launching them in a swarm cause them all to drop faster.

Of course, I don't really know what I'm talking about...

Re:from what I have heard...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the benefits of this approach is that they are cheaper to produce and deploy which means short lifespans (and perhaps higher chances of colliding with other junk) are not a problem - launch more than you need and replace them regularly. Behold the disposable satellite!

Satellite arrays

[FirienFirien]

The arrays mentioned here are a nifty piece of lateral thinking. Compare them to the giant detector arrays on earth; if you have two detectors a large distance apart, you effectively increase the aperture size to that large.

There's similar projects widely spread around the globe; by combining information from a wide array of detectors, you can eliminate significant swathes of atmospheric noise, and since you know which direction the arrays are pointing in, you can correct for depth errors electronically (ie if one detector is 90 round the earth from another, any signal that comes from that sector of sky will reach the two detectors at slightly different times (unless they happen to be at 45 either side of the signal) and the two signals can be shifted correspondingly to align the actual signal, whether it be emission from a star or the next wow signal.)

On the other hand, a satellite array would probably be non-directional - can't figure off the top of my head how a signal would currently directed from a satellite, since they'd be serving multiple devices at once.... hmm. Seems like with an array you'd have better scope for having a bigger aperture; though you'd get more chance for errors if the signal was coming from a direction further away from the vertical. Comments?

Re:Satellite arrays

[FirienFirien]

Ooh, unless you gave it depth. Depth would allow you to work out the direction of the wave, which would allow you to work out how much to shift it by. There's a bit of a paradox here in that you need to know the direction of a signal to be able to correspond one bit to another, but presumably starting a communication with a standard byte/word for triangulation would make that easier.

Re:Satellite arrays

[bitingduck]

if you have two detectors a large distance apart, you effectively increase the aperture size to that large.

you get the angular resolution of the aperture that size, but you don't get the sensitivity unless you have the collecting area of the larger aperture. You also can't image very well unless you have enough propellant (or apertures) to fill in the uv plane.

Re:Satellite arrays

[FirienFirien]

If you have detectors 5 miles apart, you could easily get interference to both from a satellite in LEO. If you have detectors 5000 miles apart, any data seen by one detector but not the other can be completely ignored, because it isn't from what you are looking at - the signal from a star thousands of light years away isn't changed by the mere 5000 miles at this end. Your point is good for optics and cameras - but the detectors we're looking at here are detecting what the signal from an effective point source is, across a range of frequencies (check out fourier transforms to understand how they get data from it); imaging isn't part of the project.

Radiations from a star or other source can be detected by a single detector; it's just that the bigger the aperture of the detector is (whether a physically single object, or multiple dispersed objects) the better the signal to noise ratio gets.

Re:Satellite arrays

[shadow_slicer]

A satellite array can be directional in the same way antenna arrays such as those used in RADAR are currently. They all transmit the same signal, but each delays the signal by an amount dependant on the geometry of the formation, causing the interference pattern to create directionality.

I couldn't find a real good reference online, so this is all I can point to.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[WindBourne]

It is not the huge stuff that is a problem. It is the small stuff, such as the stage bolts that are exploded. These yield numerous small parts (.5-2 centimers), that are literally untrackable. Yeah, they are small, but then again 17000 Miles per hour is a LOT of energy. As to needing a garbage collector, well, a space laser can probably be put into space and used to start pushing small stuff down into the atmosphere. Friction is a wonderful tool.

Re: Full article text - Real versions

[erbmjw]

First story from : http://www.utias-sfl.net/nanosatellites/CanX2/

The CanX-2 Mission

The CanX-2 Mission is the second "NanoSatellite" Mission at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Space Flight Laboratory (UTIAS/SFL). The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiments (CanX) push the envelope of what can be achieved in space with small, low-power devices. With a focus on aggressive experimentation, CanX missions use the latest commercial technologies and manage moderate risks in exchange for low cost and quick turnaround. UTIAS/SFL is part of an international community of nanosatellite developers that share common launches to reduce costs.

At 3.5 kilograms and the size of a carton of milk, CanX-2 will be a pathfinder mission in 2006 to evaluate novel technologies that will be used on the CanX-4 / CanX-5 dual satellite mission in 2008 to demonstrate controlled formation flying in space. Formation flying technology will open the door to larger missions for highresolution Earth observation and interferometric imaging that can also be used for space astronomy. The technologies to be tested include a novel propulsion system, custom radios, innovative attitude sensors and actuators, and a commercial GPS receiver.

In addition to evaluating these miniature technologies, the satellite will also perform experiments for other university researchers across Canada. These include a GPS radio occultation experiment to characterize the upper atmosphere (Calgary), an atmospheric spectrometer to measure greenhouse gases (York), a network communications experiment (Carleton), and a space materials experiments (Toronto).





Second story from : http://www.spacedaily.com/news/microsat-05j.html

Canadian Researchers To Showcase CanX-2 Nanosat August 31

Toronto ON (SPX) Aug 30, 2005 University of Toronto researchers will demonstrate how a satellite the size of a milk carton that may revolutionize the space industry on Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 10 a.m. at University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) Lecture Hall, 4925 Dufferin Street.

At only 3.5 kilograms, the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment 2 (CanX-2) will test small, low-power devices that could lay the groundwork for flying formations of small satellites that could eventually replace larger, more expensive satellites.

At the demonstration, researchers will control the CanX-2 nanosatellite through a wireless radio link and download real-time images and telemetry from on-board equipment including a GPS-based positioning system, a miniature propulsion system and tiny devices used for sensing and controlling the satellite's orientation in space.

"The point of this mission is two-fold," says Professor Robert Zee, managing director of the UTIAS Space Flight Laboratory (SFL).

"The first is to provide complete development cycle training for students through a real space mission that has to be completed in two years. The second is to launch a tiny research platform into space to test innovative, revolutionary technologies in a rapid, risk-taking manner and also to perform important science missions that are now benefiting from the availability of smaller and smaller instrumentation."

CanX-2 is the second nanosatellite mission at UTIAS/SFL. CanX-1, Canada's first nanosatellite and one of the smallest satellites ever built, was launched with the MOST microsatellite in 2003 by Eurockot Launch Services from Plesetsk, Russia.

Sidebar to Second story

In collaboration with researchers from across Canada, the primary mission of CanX-2 will be a GPS radio occultation experiment to determine vertical profiles of atmospheric properties. It will also perform a number of additional experiments including mobile ad-hoc networking, autonomous control, advanced surface mate

could you imagine...

[Deitheres]

a beowulf cluster of these?!

Sorry, had to be said ;-)

Seriously though... this would provide for something that is pretty lacking in current satellites: successful redundancy.

If a satellite gets hit with debris or something, it's normally down for the count. You get a cluster of these mini satellites... all sharing the workload... if one gets hit, the rest just pick up the slack.

Plus this could open up all sorts of possibilities for amateur space exploration...

The question is

[dawhippersnapper]

Do they run linux? Imagine a beowulf cluster of these =)!

Listen to reason

[polarbeerdisorder]

I am certainly not the AC that posted in the first place! And I was not looking for points, and (obviously) the AC who posted wasn't either. Why would the mods mod up my post? All it said was "mod parent up, thanks for the article"! If this is the parent poster's idea of karma whoring, then I must say: "you must be new here". At least I don't hide as an AC when a post might damage my karma. I like to call it "integrity". The parent might want to exercise a little in the future.

I genuinely could not get on to SpaceDaily. Maybe it's a problem at my end, but I found the article text useful.

And finally, I'm sorry, but how am I to know the article text is incorrect if I can't compare it to anything? Besides, if it's just a few typos, then maybe those are honest mistakes by the person who typed it up?

Re:Listen to reason

[erbmjw]

I don't think that you are being a karma whore and I don't think people are after you - though I am glad that the AC post has now dissapeared.

I was suspicious of the AC post and so I checked out the weblinks and have now put the real articles up on slashdot ( see RE: Full article text - Real versions )

Re:Listen to reason

[polarbeerdisorder]

Thank you. I can now see the differences, while small, made (ahem) a difference to the article.

Picosats

[Planetes]

There are actually many satellite projects for stuff this small. The space industry in Florida holds an annual competition for college students to design picosats called Funsat that uses the Cubesat format.

Re:Picosats

[kauschovar]

There are actually many satellite projects for stuff this small. The space industry in Florida holds an annual competition for college students to design picosats called Funsat that uses the Cubesat format. And on their website, they have a rather large list of other developers that use the CubeSat design. Indeed, small satellites are nothing new.

...the launch of QuakeSat ...

[9Nails]

Is John Carmack building this gigantic hydrogen-powered trebuchet and launching milk cartons full of electronics into space

You might be on to something there. The article goes on to explain that among other nanosatellite's, one called the QuakeSat is being launched. Now, they disguise the fact that it's for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars http://www.enemyterritory.com/ by saying that it's for Earth Quake prediction. But smart people like us know that the satellite would have been called an EarthQuakePredictionSat if that were true! It must be some sort of new network for the game. Maybe Carmack has figured out a way to eliminate the cost to space that causes players lag by overloading space with nanosatellites?

Or, perhaps the Strogg are true and we're all participating in a recruitment program to eventually become an Army trained to fight the Strogg off?!

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[WindBourne]

An SDI laser would be a mistake. It is TOO powerful. It would actually cause the items to break it multiple pieces. Instead, a laser for this purpose would just "push" on the item to start a deorbit path (prebably pretty slow deorbit).

Re:Great but....

[MoralHazard]

I think you miss the point. Big satellites are insanely expensive to design, build, and launch. If your one Big Bird blows up on the launch pad, or gets hit by the aforementioned space junk, or is shot down by the North Koreans, you've just wasted the entire expenditure.

IF, on the other hand, you spend an approximately equal amount of money to build a swarm of tiny, cheap, simple birds, that together can do the same job as a big satellite (and have some redundency amongst themselves), you can afford to lose a few from time to time. There are less catastrophes that will deny your orbital presence entirely.

Plus, if your birds are the size of milk cartons (with a mass to go with it), your launch options are a LOT more flexible: instead of commissioning your own launch, you can piggyback on other launches at a huge discount.

Like with clusters of servers, disks, or whatever, flexibility opens up tons of opportunities to save money and be more robust.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Anonymous Coward]

It is creating significant danger to any rocket with men

Then send women.

Would it have killed you to say "people"?

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Bad to the Ben]

Sorry, but I don't see how that could be at all profitable.

I mean, who would pay for such a service? Suppose the US did. Then the rest of the world gets a nice clean LEO without contributing a dime, freeloading off of their effort. If you tried to set up some international payment agreement, you'd get all sorts of bickering similar to the Kyoto agreements: why should third world nations pay, why should nations with developing space industries pay the same as behemoths like NASA, etc.

The problem with charging for the upkeep of near-Earth space is that it's accessible to all countries, and impossible to prevent those who don't pay from making use of your services (short of shooting them down, which just creates more junk).

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN -- TROLLING OPPORTUNIST

[erbmjw]

I am erbmjw - the inidividual who posted "Re: Full article text - Real versions" and wondering if you are asking others to mod my post down or was it the original post "Full article text" you were asking to have modded down?

I copied the articles directly and aside from including the formatting character - br - I have added nothing else.

I re-checked the source material for the articles against the information in my post and I can still see no difference.

erbmjw

Mini satellites revolutionary?

[commodoresloat]

If Mini satellites could revolutionize the space industry, think what big ones could do!

In Soviet Russia..

[dawhippersnapper]

Milk cartons are Satellites

A riddle

[Chris Snook]

Q. What do you call large numbers of objects no larger than a milk carton moving at orbital velocity?

A. Shrapnel

They're making progess

[AndroidCat]

Why, I remember when Canadian satellites used to be suitcase-sized! Soon they'll be cell phone sized. (Luckily, in space no one can hear your ring-tone.)

Surrey Satellites have been doing this for ages

[copperbeech]

http://www.sstl.co.uk/index.php?loc=47 Surrey satellites have been making micro-satellites and nano-satellites for a while. So what's new?

Re:Surrey Satellites have been doing this for ages

[GileadGreene]

So what's new?

This is occurring in North America, which somehow makes it news(?)

Of course, there have been plenty of micro- and nano-sat's in the US too... the CubeSat community has been doing stuff like this for years, and NASA/AFRL have sponsored the University Nanosat competition for the last several years. Not to mention NASA projects like the ST-5 nanosat constellation pathfinder, or Air Force projects like PICOsat.

Not that what the CanX team are doing isn't cool. But they're just one member of a much larger community of smallsat developers that get hardly any PR. One of the best resources for seeing what the small/micro/nano-sat community is up to is the annual SmallSat conference.

Tracking

[dcw3]

I'm just curious...

Will there be an added difficulty in tracking these due to their small size? Obviously, there's some plan to communicate with them. But, over time, as their numbers grow, and their lifespan runs out, will NORAD (or some such agency) be able to keep track of these? Small as they may be, they'ed still be big enough to cause major damage if they collided with a shuttle, or other sattelite.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN -- TROLLING OPPORTUNIST

[EtherealStrife]

arundatarchi is the Troll, not erbmjw. Check the article, he's making up the references. And they're pretty obvious too. And for the non-physicists/astronomers/etc:

interferometer: an instrument that utilizes the interference of waves (as of light) for precise determinations (as of distance or wavelength)
occultation: the interruption of the light from a celestial body or of the signals from a spacecraft by the intervention of a celestial body

Etc... arundatarchi gave me a laugh, I'll admit.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN -- TROLLING OPPORTUNIST

[Dachannien]

polarbeerdisorder, I presume?

MOST: Canada's First micro satellite

[scattol]

MOST (aka the Humble Space Telescope) is the space telescope Canada can affoard: a small one. MOST was Canada's first space telescope and the first micro satellite I've heard of.

We had a full size replica at a star party this summer and this thing is small considering what it does. Really impressive. Small means also very affoardable.

I hear that there will be a competition for time on the MOST so maybe someone will be the first amateur to make use of a micro-satellite.

Re:escape velocity for microsatellites with ion dr

[MichaelSmith]

I think somebody needs to develop an ion engine for micro-satellites

The problem is that they require too much power. 100 kilowatt power supplies can not be built into 10cm^3 devices, so I don't think this is going to work.

But imagine something like a big CD (or DVD). A thin reflective disk with a diameter of 2-3 metres. LCD shutters vary the albedo of parts of the surface so it can use light pressure to change orientation. It uses light pressure to navigate (slowly) through the solar system. You could stack 100 or more of them in a single launch.

Non-story

[Ancient_Hacker]

Just think how likely it is that:

• Space technologists, knowing the throw-weight, cost, and $/pound of every every available booster..
• Having access to all kinds of miniatureized technology....
• Having access to custom-made integrated circuits, nimble-fingered assembly robots, a wide assortment of ultra-light alloys and composites....
• .... still opt to make large, heavy, clunky satellites.

I suspect they have been trying to make things lighter, smaller every since Vanguard lifted up that grapefruit.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[dajak]

I mean, who would pay for such a service? Suppose the US did. Then the rest of the world gets a nice clean LEO without contributing a dime, freeloading off of their effort. If you tried to set up some international payment agreement, you'd get all sorts of bickering similar to the Kyoto agreements: why should third world nations pay, why should nations with developing space industries pay the same as behemoths like NASA, etc.

Obviously the countries that caused the space garbage problem should pay the cleaning bill, but that line of reasoning didn't work in Kyoto either. Space was 'clean' 50 years ago.

On the other hand garbage collection is a very good excuse for weaponizing space, so I actually expect to see a garbage collection race develop if one country takes the initiative.

Re:Evolving vocabularies

[Shaper_pmp]

Trebuchets are a specific type of catapult, so... exactly the point where precision was desired over linguistic simplicity.

IE, probably the point where you decide to post to a website full of pedantic nerds like us, right?

Re:I don't get it?

[Shaper_pmp]

Indeed. I also love the unnecessary hyperbole - not "little satellites", "mini satellites" or even "microsatellites", but nanosatellites? Are they really one-billionth the size of a regular satellite?

Well done University of Toronto for letting marketing spin and trendy buzzwords get in the way of the facts - now what are we going to call them when when we finally develop orbital devices a bit smaller than a virus?

Tsk, tsk, tsk... whatever happened to precise nomenclature? Bloody kids these days... no respect... we have these different prefixes for a reason, y'know...

Debris?

[sepelester]

Wouldn't clusters of small satellites actually be larger than conventional satellites, contributing to the growing amount of orbital space debris?

I'd hate to be trapped here!

Re:Debris?

[grozzie2]

You are trapped here, deal with it.

How big's bigger than a breadbox?

[otter42]

...with a miniature version no larger than a milk carton.

Great!

Err...

Exactly just how big is a milk carton? Is this Canadian milk or American?

(This is actually a serious question. A milk carton in Europe is only one liter sized, which is pretty danged small for a satellite!)

Re:How big's bigger than a breadbox?

[Tidal Flame]

We have several different sizes. The biggest is 4 litres.

Space Junk?

[FhnuZoag]

Wouldn't such an initiative contribute to the amount of space junk up there? With more, smaller satellites, there is more chance of failures on each individual one, and less incentive to build in quality to stop these becoming another space hazard. The satellites also become harder to track, making collisions more likely... Has a study been done of the safety implications, here?

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Zeussy]

One system I have heard is 2 satelites with a cable between them, pulsing an electric current through the cable to induce a magnetic field. Can't remember if it is to either collect debris of deflect it down into the atmosphere. Quite effective its a couple of miles across.

Satellites do have redundancy

[RoverDaddy]

Big corporations don't spend mega-millions putting satellites into orbit without contingency plans. Sure, a debris hit may take out an entire satellite, but that risk is quite low. Component failures on the other hand are commonplace, so satellites that have to earn their keep have a lot of redundant functionality.

Consider the satellites used by US satellite TV providers Dish and Direct TV. Each of these -big- birds is launched with far more capacity (i.e. transponders) than the providers intend to use. Over the lifetime of the satellite, numerous failures occur. Failing transponders are put of service and replaced with idle ones. I used to wonder whether my TV service would be out-of-order for months if the particular satellite I'm locked on just died completely. I learned that the TV provider can even move satellites they own from one spot in geosynchronous orbit to another, temporarily restoring service until they can get another bird in the air. And they do use a lot of birds: I believe Echostar (Dish) is up to 10.

NASA already has projects like this

[bjomo]

NASA already has a couple nanosat programs that will fly in formation. They are sometimes refered to as constellation missions.

ST-5
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st5/

THEMIS
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/themis/flash.html

These are the two that I know off the top of my head.

BOGUS STORY!

[Ingolfke]

Space Daily reports that University of Toronto researchers are working on a project that could replace conventional satellites with a miniature version no larger than a milk carton

Silly hosers, everyone knows that Canadians get their milk from a bag not a carton, eh.

Re:BOGUS STORY!

[JediTrainer]

Silly hosers, everyone knows that Canadians get their milk from a bag not a carton, eh.

Actually, we respect freedom of choice. My grocery store carries both bags AND cartons.

Then again, we can't get our milk in jugs.

Will spur new missing notices

[noidentity]

Skip forward to 2015: on the back of milk cartons are notices of missing milk carton sized satellites.

Re:I don't get it?

[bjomo]

While this nomenclature will never satisfy the sticklers for proper prefix usage, it is an accepted classification for small satellites in the aerospace field. And I would doubt that U of Toronto coined the term

Unsupported assertion

[RoverDaddy]

flying formations of small satellites that could eventually replace larger, more expensive satellites

I hate reading text like this in the context of university research projects. Every prof. looking for grant money seems quite willing to say 'Our new Fremulator design will revolutionize the VeebleFetzer industry and replace more expensive Framistan devices used today.' Considering the amount of additional hardware needed by a flock of microsatellites (propulsion, orientation, power collection, communications), you'll need some huge gains in other areas to really make this cheaper than one big integrated satellite. TFA says nothing to support the idea that these small birds really have practical commercial applications.

Re:Unsupported assertion

[twiddlingbits]

...practical commercial applications. How about instant photo's of disaster areas (like New Orleans), how about a sattelite comm? Kinda like the old Iridium idea. How about real time intelligence on your enemy? This idea is not new, I first read about it in one of Dale Brown's techno thriller books well over 10 years ago. He called them NIRTSats for Need It Right This Second. They could be launched off a fighter or B52, the were about the size of an air-to-air missile. When brings up the Pegasus sat-killer missile..but that's a different type of "payload".

Space Junk?

[argStyopa]

IIRC the amount of debris and uncontrolled objects in LEO is already a bit of an issue.

Currently, if your multimilliondollar satellite dies, it's another piece of space junk.

One of these systems dies, it's 100+ pieces of space junk.

While I can see the value in the redundancy and survivability of such a system, the impact on the future LEO environment and, for that matter, ground based astronomy is probably not zero...

Um. no, not likely.

[RoverDaddy]

Just how many satellite launches do you think take place in one year? If you need 100 microsatellites sent to the same spot in orbit to duplicate the functionality of a single big satellite, you'll be launching most (if not all) of those birds on a single rocket.

I would predict that practical microsatellites will also be insanely expensive to design and launch (maybe not build).

As I suggested elsewhere, major catastrophes that completely take out a satellite already in orbit are rare enough already.

Re:Um. no, not likely.

[MoralHazard]

Just how many satellite launches do you think take place in one year? If you need 100 microsatellites sent to the same spot in orbit to duplicate the functionality of a single big satellite, you'll be launching most (if not all) of those birds on a single rocket.

Not necessarily. You can piggyback on multiple other launches to get several payloads to the same spot in orbit--it might take a while, but you factor that into your operation. And we don't yet know whether 100 microsatellites will need to be in the same place to do the job of one big guy.

Right now, it's impossible to know how many satellites, or in what configurations, would be required to perform the job of one bigger satellite. That's why these guys are researching the issue: to determine what the practical constraints of the idea are.

And even if you're right about having to put all the microsatellites in one spot, you miss that fact that the cheaper birds can be redesigned and replaced on a much shorter schedule than bigger, more expensive satellites. A $500million comsat needs to have a service lifetime of years, if not a decade or more, in order to pay for itself. Whereas micros could be redesigned like automobiles, every year or two, with new ones being sent in to replace or augment on a continuous basis.

Want to know the biggest problem with a $500m, 12-year old satellite? It's using technology that's 15 years old. Bigger, heavier chips and components. More expensive tech. And it's impossible to take advantage of newer, cheaper, smaller stuff if you aren't building new birds. The microsatellites, since they could be continuously re-designed and deployed, would be taking advantage of the new tech all the time.

Think of it like buying a computer that you have a 15-year upgrade path for, as opposed to a computer that will never get any faster of better without you buying a whole new system. Even if the total 15-year cost of the upgradable system amounted to $600m or $700m, and the non-upgradeable system was only $500m, you'd still be winning because you're getting more for your money. You keep the system current with new tech, and your lifetime computing power is substantially higher than if you couldn't upgrade. Think about how much faster and cheaper computer components have gotten in any 15-year period.

I would predict that practical microsatellites will also be insanely expensive to design and launch (maybe not build).

Now you're just crystal-balling. WHY would you predict that (besides the fact that it supports your argument)?? And how would the design costs NOT come down, when you're amortizing the design cost of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of units that share the same design?

My stepfather built defense satellites for 37 years (he just retired 6 mos. ago). He made a LOT of money, and had a team of about 50 people making similar big dough, and they would all work on ONE satellite for a couple of years. Design is really, REALLY expensive when you only build one at a time.

As I suggested elsewhere, major catastrophes that completely take out a satellite already in orbit are rare enough already.

IN ORBIT, maybe, but satellites are lost on the pad and in transit, too. And one of the reasons why launches are so expensive now is because the amount of money riding on them is so high (expensive payloads) that the launchers must be uber-careful with their cargo. If the financial risk of a failed launch came down by an order of magnitude (because the value of the cargo dropped as much), you'd be able to make any given launch happen for cheaper. How much cheaper, I don't know.

And consider that orbit will probably become militarized, perhaps heavily so, in our lifetimes (it kind of has already, hasn't it?). So major catastrophes that completely take out a satellite in orbit may become less and less rare as we go from here.

now imagine

[budhaboy]

a baeowolf cluster of them...

oh right.

Re:I don't get it?

[mikael]

You could always have one conventional launch that places a "mother" satellite into orbit. This would move to the correct orbital plane, test and release the mini-sat and then move to the next orbital position, ready for the next mini-sat.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[HangingChad]

So collecting of this garbage sure will be next big enterprise after opening civilian space flight.

Please have your satellites parked on the low earth orbit curb on Thursdays.

Seriously, if these can maneuver it would seem like there would be some type of de-oribt protocol for these little guys at EOM. Otherwise, yeah, one of them is going to come through the space shuttle window.

Interspace Highways...

[St. Arbirix]

The windshields of the future will have to be able to deflect these things like the gnats they'll become. Can you imagine how fun it would be navigate around this planet if it's surrounded by a fine dusting of millions and billions of these bugs?

De-orbiting

[The Fun Guy]

Each mini-satellite should come standard with a de-orbiting mechanism, like a small gas cannister or an azide pellet. When the lifespan is up, de-orbit the satellite to avoid adding to the space junk problem.

Re:De-orbiting

[mfrank]

Cool idea for deorbiting stuff in LEO that I saw was to just inflate a balloon. Fairly low mass and foolproof and greatly increases the speed that it drops out of orbit.

old, old news

[peter303]

People have been doing this for a long time. There are cluster launches of mini-satellites and specifications for engineering them.

It's pretty obvious to me...

[The Allmighty Fluffy]

That's where the Buggers have set up their listening post!

Don't consider the future in a current context

[guybarr]

I mean, who would pay for such a service?

2.5 thousand years ago, you might have said the same for urban-garbage collection:

I mean, who will pay ? Suppose the governing clan did ? Then the rest of the clans get a nice clean polis without contributing a single loaf of bread ?

I'm not trying to mock you, just give a reasonable counter-example by analogy: by which I mean that under a certain population density, there was no need for garbage-collectors. Once the technical capabilities and common need arose, so did the financial mechanisms.

I believe it may not be different for LEO g.c.

A personal Satellite?

[marlinSpike]

Perhaps I could have my own, to beam my iTunes tracks where ever I happen to be!

Re:escape velocity for microsatellites with ion dr

[khallow]

The problem is that they require too much power. 100 kilowatt power supplies can not be built into 10cm^3 devices, so I don't think this is going to work.

There's absolutely no reason that you couldn't develope an ion drive that uses a few watts, for example. The thrust would be incredibly low even for ion drives, but you wouldn't need much for station keeping outside of LEO.

But imagine something like a big CD (or DVD). A thin reflective disk with a diameter of 2-3 metres. LCD shutters vary the albedo of parts of the surface so it can use light pressure to change orientation. It uses light pressure to navigate (slowly) through the solar system. You could stack 100 or more of them in a single launch.

Nice idea.

imagine....

[DeathByDuke]

a beowulf cluster of milk cartons

I'll see your space laser, and raise you an army

[Scrameustache]

a space laser can probably be put into space and used to start pushing small stuff down into the atmosphere.

Yeah? Well, I just hope my hordes of undead ninja monkeys overtakes the launch pad before your mad plan for world domination and unecessary widespread devastation is in effect...

Communications Satellites

[Tony]

Communications satellites are about one thing-- pushing as much data through with as little energy as possible. A *lot* of the mass of a satellite is in the power subsystem, and a lot of that won't scale down as well as it scales up.

Then there's the communications issue itself. If you have an array of satellites serving one area, you stand a greater chance of require *two* earth-satellite-earth hops, once through the satellite serving the source, and one for the destination. If you have a single satellite, you can reduce that to one hop (assuming the communications system is capable of point-to-point communications, and is not stuck with point-to-gateway communications).

I don't see pico sats affecting the communications industry right now-- perhaps in a couple of decades, but maybe not. Considering Shin satellite just launched the largest (most massive, with the most bandwidth) satellite ever, there still seems to be life left in the big boys.

Statistics?

[rgf71]

THere was a site with some presumably up-to-date information on numbers of "crap" floating in orbit. It even had a nifty little animation.

Anyone know what site I'm talking about? I can't find it.

This is a VERY BAD idea

[williamyf]

I am all for less expensive satellites. The problem with this Idea is tht satellites so small are difficuylt to track, and we already have Huge Problems with all the debris that circles the earth, remaining of previous launches, discarded stages of rockets, et cetera, et cetera.

Those problems are that any of those pieces of debris may collide with satellites and spacecraft currently in use, damaging it. Actually, It is a big Concern for the International Space Station.

Please take a look at the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, and see for yoursefl why this seems like a bad Idea

http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/

Use of the shelf parts to make tham cheaper and lighter, and redundancy to make them last longer, but make them the same size as they are today!

Suerte a todos y feliz dia!

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[twiddlingbits]

There was a Shuttle experiment on this about 10? years ago, the put a small payload on the end of a tether cable about 3 miles long and it followed the orbit of the Shuttle. It generated a LOT of electrical current. There was some thought to using the current generated as a power source for ISS. However, the lower orbit moves faster and places tension on the cable, so the stresses have to be carefully considered other wise the cable will snap. This would probably be a good use of the carbon nanotube fibers woven into a cable with a conductive outer surface.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[quarkscat]

Do we really need more LEO space junk? The future of manned space flight is doomed if mini-/micro-/nano- satellites become popular. Of course, that could justify a primary mission for the space elevator -- that of a "pool skimmer" to extract space junk. Imagine a beowolf cluster of space elevator "pool skimmers".

Since LEO space junk is travelling at 1800 miles per hour (or better), the "skimmers" will need to be made of depleted uranium armour plating. The impact with space junk would vaporize a good bit of that plating. Ionized depleted uranium trapped within the Van Allen belts should create quite a "light show", which would further screw up ground based telescopes.

Perhaps there really needs to be some kind of international treaty that limits these tiny satellites, as well as an OEM "deposit" to go into a recycling/clean-up fund.

Power issues

[spaceyhackerlady]

There are a number of practical issues with teeny tiny satellites, but one of the biggies is power.

Realistically, the only power source for more than a few weeks is solar cells. Small satellites have small surface area, and so have a very imited power generation capability. Sunlight gives you about 1 kW per square meter in Earth orbit, but the very best solar cells are less than 25% efficient. Hence the problem.

...laura

Re:Power issues

[GileadGreene]

Actually, the best commercially available space-ready solar cells operate at around 28% efficiency these days. Rumor has it that there are 30-35% efficient cells in the lab right now. Of course, none of that invalidates your basic point...

Mars tracks will be prettier now !

[jon1012]

Ahhhh !!! At least, now those will be prettier and smaller !
Imagine R2D2 as a milk carton flying thru space, sending information and landing on mars !

Re:I don't get it?

[Rei]

The idea is nothing new - LEO satellite constellations are a very old, already implemented idea, and have a lot of benefits over GEOs (for example, reduced communication latency). The only difference with this is that the biggest disadvantage of constellations over GEOs is cost; satellites this small should be able to bring that down.

One thing that really seemed to be missing from their picture, however, was a seemingly critical element: reboost capability. I don't see any sort of thrusters on it. In LEO, you lose energy to drag at a relevant rate. Your cross-sectional area vs your mass tends to determine how quickly you lose orbital energy, and being so lightweight, even with how small they are, its orbit should decay at a reasonable clip. I'd think, depending on the orbit, that they'd reenter somewhere between a couple months and a couple years after deployment, and their orbits would become irregular before that.

Perhaps they plan to launch sats of this design as MEO constellations, not LEO? This article is so short on details, it's hard to tell.

Think of the children!

[el_gregorio]

Isn't going to be awfully hard to see the pictures of lost kids from that far away?

Satellites made of solid gold?

[Inoen]

"...no larger than a milk carton.... At only 3.5 kilograms..." Around here, a milk carton is usually 1 litre. What do they make these satellites of? Certainly not aluminum.

Interstellar propulsion FAQ

[ngr8]

The author Paul Glister's blog @ Centauri Dreams keeps tabs on new propulsion technologies ++ space geek topics in general.

One technology, Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2) comes complete with a 7 meg flying coffee can flash demo.

Glister's book, Centauri Dreams, gives me some hope that science and discovery will drive NASA again.

Solution

[iridium_ionizer]

Once the obital paths of manned spacecraft become clogged by mini-satellites, we will just need to send up small manned fighters equipped with undepletable rocket launchers and they can save the fleet from the vast, onslaught of semi-intelligent space-baddies through endless stages to get the high score.

Thanks, Mr. Brown...

[Firefly1]

I'm reminded of the NIRTSATs (Need It Right This Second Satellites) which were introduced to Dale Brown's principal fictional universe in 'Sky Masters'... all they'd need to add is a means for quick aerial launch and there you go.
One more thing: read through the abovecited book and you'll see an interesting emergency use for the things...

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Firefly1]

In a word:
Planetes
(Tokyopop manga translation; official site of Bandai DVD; AnimeInfo.com review of Bandai DVD)

Re:I don't get it?

[sharkdba]

whatever happened to precise nomenclature?

I agree, they didn't specify WHICH milk cartoon:
there are probably more, but the few I'm aware of:

• half pints carton - popular in schools
• 24oz - for those afraid of 32oz
• 32oz - for those who think quarter is too much
• quarter - known as liter in Europe
• half gallon - quite popular in US, you need 2 to replace those plastic gallon containers
• and of course there's the full size one

So how are poor readers to know what NASA, err... Canadian Space something - is talking about?

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[dakirw]

There isn't a whole lot of it actually. There is probably more tonnage in rocks floating around the planet than man-made debris. I don't know where that rumor started, all the man-made stuff is huge, huge empty tanks the ones you can see from the ground. All of them can be tracked with ground observation. Smaller stuff doesn't go that high.

But even paint flecks and screws/nuts could cause a lot of damage at the speeds they're going at. Cheaper mini satellites would probably be launched under less stringent safety checks, as the owners wouldn't be quite as concerned with losing a dozen hundred thousand dollar satellites, as opposed to a single hundred million dollar one.

I'm not sure I'd want to spacewalk out there under those conditions, especially if tens of thousands of mini satellites (and their associated launch debris) are floating around too.

Re:google paid links in main list?

[JimmehAH]

I believe it has something to do with Google Sitemaps.

Sites that have a sitemap show those links; those that don't, don't.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[myth24601]

"However, the lower orbit moves faster and places tension on the cable, so the stresses have to be carefully considered other wise the cable will snap."

I seem to recall that it did snap at one point.

Slingshot

[michelcultivo]

Even you can use a slingshot to put it on orbit!

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[twiddlingbits]

I recall the mechanism to reel it in jammed due to the excess tension. They had to cut the cable or they let it all spool out, I'm not sure which one. The researchers were really bummed.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[mfrank]

I think the main problem they had was electrical arcing (that may have caused the cable to break). The actual tension caused by the tidal effect aren't really that strong for that short of a cable.

Re:I don't get it?

[Dirtside]

I also love the unnecessary hyperbole - not "little satellites", "mini satellites" or even "microsatellites", but nanosatellites? Are they really one-billionth the size of a regular satellite?

Considering that "satellite" is not a standard unit of measurement, "nanosatellite" can be colloquially understood to mean "comparatively tiny satellite" by those of us who don't have giant sticks shoved up our arses.

Re:I don't get it?

[Shaper_pmp]

And those of us that do have giant sticks shoved up our arses? What of them, eh?

Re:I don't get it?

[Dirtside]

I have discovered a truly marvelous arse-stick-removing technique, however this Slashdot post is too small to contain it.

Old Dupe

[iamlucky13]

It goes even further back than that. Try the Tech Update section of Popular Mechanics from around 1990.

If you really want to rain on the article, the first satellites weren't much bigger than we're talking here. Sputnik 1 was a 23 inch sphere. Vanguard 1 (the US's 2nd satellite) was only 6 inches in diameter. Both were genuine scientific mission, providing some of the first data we got about atmospheric density, temperature, radiation, and micrometorites from a low earth orbit. In fact, the solar powered Vanguard provided a strong enough radio signal for tracking for 7 years, which helped to determine that the earth isn't quite round. In fact, the Vanguard 1 is actually still in orbit, currently the oldest artificial satellite, and should continue orbiting for almost 200 more years.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[mcrbids]

There was a Shuttle experiment on this about 10? years ago, the put a small payload on the end of a tether cable about 3 miles long and it followed the orbit of the Shuttle. It generated a LOT of electrical current.

But, there is no free lunch.

Current generated with a tether-based system comes at the expense of orbital velocity. If you extract electricity from a tether, you're getting that energy from the orgital inertia. Thus, your orbit dwindles if you "spend" this energy.

OTOH, if you pump electricity INTO the tether, say, with solar panels or nuclear power, you can ADD energy to your orbital velocity. Thus, you can do an incredible amount of orbital manipulation merely by suplying or burning electrical energy, with NO MOVING PARTS and NO FUEL PROPELLANT.

There was an article in (I believe) Popular Science about this in the last 6 months or so I found utterly fascinating. What this means for sky hooks/space elevators is anybody's guess.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Rich0]

That might not be such a bad thing (loss of orbital momentum).

1. Deploy tether.
2. Generate electromagnetic field.
3. Gather space junk with said field.
4. Eventually orbit decays and craft deorbits, carrying gathered junk.

Of course, this would be useless for non-ferromagnetic material. Maybe an dispersed ionizing radiation source or something like that could be used to ionize non-metallic objects to draw them into the field.

WOW Really

[BigLonn]

Yeah I remember reading about this concept in Aviation week and space technology,,,, in ,,, 1991. "I believe John Dvorak said it best, there are no new ideas, just old bad ones that won't go away" I think thats what he said!